Boot problems with winXP. Help anyone?

[rsrvoir]

I just recently put together a new system:

1.6@2.3 w/144 fsb
Asus P4B533-E
vcore 1.6(idle), 1.525(load)
384 mhz Corsair XMS PC2700 (undocumented jumper trick), cas 2-3-3-6
Gainward MX440 (Crappy, I know)
Maxtor 80gb quiet drive.

I'm running XP and have done pretty extensive prime95 testing, and Hot CPU, all with 100% stability. Everything was running smoothly, no problems. Yesterday, I rearranged some fans, turned it back on, and I got a bluescreen. I brought all the settings down, but it still did it. Finally got it stable at 2.24 ghz, with a 1:1 memory ratio. Tried to kick to ratio back up (just for curiosity), but it got some other kind of memory error and wouldn't boot. Now every time I boot up, XP tells me it has just recovered from a serious error. I've brought it down to 2.0 ghz, but still does that. Can't tell if it's something I've done messing with the hardware, or if it's just a negative effect of oc'ing on the operating system (corrupted files, etc). I'm reallys stuck

(My PCI/AGP is locked in at 66/33)

 

[jaybee]

Man I wish I knew more about this, but there's a feature of XP that sounds like the culprit. I think it's called System Restore. I think your machine is fine. You might want to knock the voltage up .025v if you're going to run at 144fsb. My guess is it wasn't as stable as you think. Anyway, look into System Restore and I think you'll be able to solve your Windows problem.

jaybee

PS Sorry for the thinking & guessing...

 

[rsrvoir]

Thanks Jaybee.

I'll look into the system restore feature. Sucks, cause I had it running smoothly (or so I thought). It prime95'd for well over 14 hours at that setting, and went through a couple of the 6 hour tests in Hot Cpu tester. Got certification and all. Strange.

Just a note. When all the bluescreen errors were happening (Two of them. Most frequent was the one with underscores in it, talking about nonpaged area, defualt values, something like that), I finally got it to boot in safe mode. From there I just went ahead tried a system restore. Then it went from giving a bluescreen, but gives me that message about having recovered from a serious error. I considered giving more volage, but I think I'd rather drop my fsb down to 138 or so, and have near full chip life. Stability and lifespan is what I'm shooting for.

Any other ideas? Happened to anyone around here?

 

[jaybee]

Actually, forget about upping vcore, those sound more like memory problems to me. My guess is 384MHz is too much for the XMS PC2700. If you're up to it, you can test your cpu max with 1:1 to see what the potential is. Anyway, I think you need to do a new snapshot for the system restore and it'll forget about whatever error occurred. Drop fsb a couple MHz and you'll be good. Also, you might want to test at 1:1; who knows, you might be faster at 160 (or whatever you max out at) 1:1 than at 140 3:4.

jaybee

 

[rsrvoir]

Thanks again. I'm gonna do a system restore from back a bit. As of right now though, it's still giving the same error, even at a 1:1 memory ratio, and a fsb of 100. Could this memory just have crapped out on me??

I had played with the memory at 2.6 and 2.7 volts, but mostly just 2.6. Never took it any higher. Why would it have just hit a brick wall like that? I just hope there's nothing physically wrong with it...

 

[rsrvoir]

Bump for more input...

 

[rsrvoir]

*Update* I restored to about a month back, but still no fix. Re-loaded the OS and it's back up stable (so far). Anyone else had the OS just start freaking out on them like this? Could it be that at 140+ fsb, system files get out of whack? I don't have enough oc'ing experience to know if you should just expect to reload a few times a year because of high fsb.

 

[rsrvoir]

Isn't this great? Aside from Jaybee's help, I can just sit in here and answer all my own questions...

Everyone's too busy flaming each other and arguing about amd vs intel I guess

 

[jaybee]

I don't think the fsb per se was a problem. It looks to me like you were pushing the memory too far. Maybe the memory coughed on a file operation and corrupted a system file. Just a guess... anyway, I think you've found the limits of the memory. As I said, you can try setting 1:1 and test the cpu limits...

jaybee

PS Prime95 and Hot CPU are not good memory stability testers from what I've heard, so I'm not surprised the memory error slipped through testing.

 

[Bharat]

Well, it is a bit strange.

I initially had my system running fairly OK at 2.13, for about 3 weeks. Then I started to push it, and suddenly went too far, and it went bonkers. Had to re-install XP and it seemed OK, but in the last 8-10 days, the weather here in London has been warm, and my CPU temperature shot up from about 34 Idle to about 39-40 idle, and I've had a couple of these 'Windows recovered from a serious error' type of messages.

The temperature of the m/b is actually 40 at idle, so I can't really understand what is going on.

I am tempted to maybe re-installing it again, but it's such a pain, that I think I'll just live with it for now and see if it gets any worse, then maybe I'll do something.